


Survival of the Worst

by gin_eater



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Geographical Inaccuracies, Pre-Recall, Rating May Change, emotional grab-bag but baseline humor, extremely minor original character death, former lovers to enemies to lovers to ???, hyperbolic tea discourse, move they're gay, mumbled scientific vagueries for Effect
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-16 20:04:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15444804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gin_eater/pseuds/gin_eater
Summary: If Angela Ziegler could have chosen one person with whom to become stranded on a deserted island, Moira O'Deorain would have been nowhere near the top of that list; she wouldn't even have made the front side of the page.Unfortunately, fate has a nasty habit of spitting in the face of free will.





	Survival of the Worst

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't actually going to even go here, but then I tripped over Moicy and somehow landed ass-up in the middle of the registrar's office. Story of my fandom life.
> 
> Anyway, I was remembering the film _Six Days, Seven Nights_ a couple of days ago and thought, "Hmm." Thus:

"One for Auckland, please, as soon as possible. It's an emergency."

It wasn't, strictly speaking, an emergency; more of a pressing concern. She hadn't originally meant to detour here, but less than two hours each way on a puddle jumper when she had a fourteen-hour layover in New Zealand had seemed too reasonable a trade for a chance to visit some former patients, see how they were doing. That those patients happened to be a tiny village on a beautiful, relatively remote Polynesian island hadn't hurt the case her heart had presented to her brain, either. There was also a Category 3 cyclone slouching its way across the Oceania, and she'd wanted to check that they were better prepared this time, in order to get the jump on arranging aid for them if they weren't.

She'd been glad to find most everything in order -- water, non-perishables, and antibiotics sensibly stocked up, and the community with systems in place for looking out for one another, and their livestock, and their homes. Even more heartwarming was the welcome she'd received, happily crowded and embraced by children and adults alike, and god knew they hadn't let her leave hungry.

But island life moved at an altogether difference pace than that of more metropolitan civilizations, and she'd lost track of time -- practically sacrilege, for a Swiss -- and now she was cutting her connecting flight from Auckland to Lijiang far too close for comfort. She couldn't afford any delays if she wanted to make it in time for the graduation ceremony at the Chinese city's Institute of Medical Technology, at which she was touted to be the keynote speaker.

The Omnic behind the ticket counter -- a newer, pink-lit model with an admittedly adorable set of swivelling metallic cat ears -- accepted her credit card, identification and passport, ran down the documents with its optical scanners, and fed its fingertip into the computer's data port to route the pertinent information into the airline's system.

"You're in luck," it said. "This is the only remaining flight before the storm. Any later and you'd probably have been stuck here for at least another few days."

Angela smiled. "Well, then, I must have a guardian angel."

The Omnic glowed a little more brightly, indicative of the expression being returned, and gestured with one ear toward the far end of the tiny terminal.

"There's a small lounge on the right, just before the doors to the tarmac. I'm told it usually has some really bad coffee, if you'd like."

Angela murmured her thanks and headed in the indicated direction, pulling her hard shell suitcase along behind her.

The front wall of the lounge was all windows, like a storefront display, and Angela's feet stuttered to a stop, sneakers squeaking against the tiled floor, at the view the small room offered within. She felt the blood drain from her face.

What -- how -- _why_  ...

... and why _here,_ of all places?

What the hell kind of clumsy Casablanca set-up _was_ this, that of all the lounges in all the airports in all the world, Moira O'-fucking-Deorain had to turn up in _this_ one?

Heart pounding, mouth suddenly dry, Angela turned on her heel before she could be spotted, and made her way back to the ticket desk.

"Excuse me, sorry -- you're _absolutely certain_ there are no other flights today?"

The Omnic's head tilted sideways, puzzled, its ears flattened in a frown. "I'm afraid there aren't, no. Is something the matter? Can I be of assistance?"

Indeed there was approximately two meters' worth of _something the matter,_ wearing a bespoke white linen suit and Birkenstocks, folded into an elegant slouch in a vinyl armchair, and depositing the contents of a fifty-milliliter bottle of Tullamore Dew into a paper cup of what Angela guessed was the aforesaid really bad coffee.

"No!" she said quickly. "No, I was just ... double-checking. It's fine. It's fine! Um. Thank you."

She headed again toward the lounge, much more slowly this time, and peered through the corner of its glass wall.

Thankfully, Moira didn't seem to have noticed Angela's arrival or abrupt about-face, giving the younger woman the opportunity to observe her without interference.

Unlimited funding and negligible oversight agreed with her, Angela admitted, not without bitterness: Moira looked like she hadn't aged a day in the years since they'd last seen one another in person. Her manner of dress was still rakishly masculine, and her hair still the same fiery copper it had always been. One brown eye, one blue. She still exuded the same air of contemptuous disinterest in anything that didn't immediately relate back to whatever abomination-du-jour currently held her fancy, and when she flipped a page, Angela caught sight of some form of cybernetic augmentation implanted in her left wrist, the purpose of which Angela shuddered even to contemplate. There was no telling what she'd done to the rest of her body, the way her clothes appeared to hang as they always had -- impeccably -- upon her lanky frame notwithstanding. In short, she was still  _Moira:_ infuriatingly irreverent and attractive in equal measure, as timelessly compelling and ruinous as a gottverdammt black hole.

 _No,_ Angela told herself firmly. She wasn't doing this. She wasn't this faint-hearted, not by a long shot, and she was giving Moira  _far_ too much credit besides. Angela was a veteran combat medic, for heaven's sake, and one of the most highly respected experts in every single one of her myriad fields of study; she could more than handle a few scathing looks and barbed remarks from a flash, disgraced geneticist-cum-bureaucrat with negotiable definitions of both ethics and sanity, who'd only ever managed to produce results that could be termed flukes at best.

Even if Angela  _had_ used to foolishly daydream about what that same delusional quack would look like, dressed in a tuxedo and standing at the end of an aisle lined with their -- well, Angela's -- friends and loved ones.

She took a preparatory breath, adjusted her posture, lifted her chin, and entered the lounge.

Moira, absorbed in a print copy of some scientific journal, didn't look up until Angela had passed her and seated herself in the chair furthest from Moira herself. Angela ignored her as she plucked her holopad out of her tote bag, and suppressed a smirk as she caught Moira's double-take out of the corner of her eye.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Moira's voice was low, but the demand had escaped, Angela could tell, without her brain having much say in the matter. Score one for Team Ziegler, even if it was the one question Angela herself was chomping at the bit to ask in turn.

But she did not ask. She glanced up, feigning surprise, not needing to feign the dismay that accompanied it. "Doctor O'Deorain," she said smoothly. "What an unexpected disappointment."

The insult seemed to be all Moira required to recover herself. Her odd eyes narrowed. "Likewise, Doctor Ziegler. A most extraordinary coincidence."

"Isn't it?" Angela looked at Moira's paper cup, the smell of whiskey clearly wafting in the steam. "How's the coffee?"

"Abysmal, much like the company. Care for a cup?"

"No, thank you. I'm capable of flying sober."

It was a low blow, and had it been anyone else, Angela would never have mocked a person for their anxieties. Still, she almost felt bad when she saw the jab register in Moira's eyes -- barely, the subtlest of wounded flickers disrupting the harsh light of her disdain, but there.

It was that sliver of guilt that made Angela say what she did next, when Moira slipped her copy of _Behavioral and Brain Sciences_ back into her leather messenger bag and moved as if to rise.

"If you're thinking of rescheduling, don't bother, unless you have some time to kill. With the cyclone coming, this is the last flight for days."

Moira's jaw clenched, but she settled back in her chair with a sigh.

"Brilliant," she muttered under her breath.

"I'll behave if you do," Angela promised. She held out her hand. "Ninety minutes, no talking. As little acknowledgement of the other person as civilly possible."

Moira scowled at the offered hand, pursing her thin lips in annoyance. After a moment, though, she took it, and gave it a single accordant pump. The skin beneath her fleshtone glove, Angela knew, was cold and cyanotic, and she wondered if Moira still maintained the fiction that it was caused by a rare, chronic form of Reynaud's phenomenon.

"Agreed."

Moira took out her journal and recommenced her reading. Angela did the same, and ten minutes passed in tense but not entirely awkward silence, until the door to the lounge slid open and a man in a pilot's uniform poked his head in. He was young, with an amiable face and a broad, easy smile.

"Ladies," he greeted them. "My name's James Murphy, I'll be chauffeuring you across the beautiful blue today. We're ready whenever you are."

Moira gulped down the last of her really-bad-coffee cocktail, and she and Angela gathered up their things and followed him out onto the tarmac. The sky was already darkening, the clouds heavy-laden and rolling convexly inland like a slow-motion, aerial groundswell. The first raindrop pecked Angela squarely above her right eyebrow, and quick spots of black wet appeared on the grey of the runway as the clouds began to drizzle in earnest.

She cast a surreptitious look at Moira, who was a shade paler than usual -- no minor feat, where her complexion was concerned.

"Are you certain it's safe to fly, even now?" Angela asked the pilot, more for the Irishwoman's benefit than her own, damn her nurturant instincts.

Murphy smiled reassuringly. "Absolutely, ma'am. Just a bit of rain, this. There might be a bit more turbulence than usual, but we're still hours away from the main event."

Angela smiled to show than her confidence had been duly restored, but even she was tempted to frown as they were led past a small jet similar to the one she'd flown in on, to a downright miniscule little seaplane, outfitted in combination floats, that had been hidden behind it. She heard Moira inhale through her nose beside her as the pilot opened the side hatch and climbed in, then gestured for their luggage, which he secured in the back before hopping out and offering a hand to help them aboard, which Angela accepted and Moira declined.

There were only two seats, but they were at least a good size, and comfortable. Even Moira had leg room.

They fastened their seatbelts as the pilot clambered into the cockpit and began flipping switches and radioing tower control. Within minutes, the propeller was spinning and they were cleared for takeoff, and the little plane bumped along the runway, gradually ramping up to speed.

Angela looked out the window, entranced, as she always was, by the sight of the ground pulling further and further away. She missed flying -- not like this, of course; if she took less than a dozen flights per year, she considered herself practically a homebody -- but under her own power, Mercy's power, for the pleasure of it ...

She tamped down on the feeling before it could turn into full-blown nostalgia, Moira's presence beside her making her especially cautious where memories of Overwatch were concerned. Thinking about Overwatch would inevitably lead to thinking about the _end_ of Overwatch, and then about the revelation of Blackwatch, and Moira's activities therein, and then the bitter, bitter severing of the brittle connection between the two of them that at times Angela had caught herself ill-advisedly considering an actual relationship.

No, it was definitely best to skirt those thoughts for now. She could process this meeting on the next leg of her journey, in the relative privacy of a first class cabin and its accompanying free champagne (because for that flight in particular, she would prefer to be very drunk indeed).

She took out her holopad and picked up where she'd left off on an article about extracellular matrix proteins. Moira, she noticed, completely ignored her messenger bag and the journal within it, the fingers of her ungloved hand tapping the armrest between them in a nervous rhythm, no doubt itching for a cigarette. Angela remembered teasing her about the habit once -- the nervous one, not the nicotine addiction -- saying her fingers kicked like tiny Irish stepdancers. Angela had drawn little shoes on Moira's fingertips with a permanent marker when she'd been asleep. Moira had tried to be furious about it, but it was too absurd; instead, she'd vowed revenge, and Angela had woken up a couple of weeks later with three sixes on the back of her neck that went unnoticed until Jack summoned her to his office and asked, deadly serious, if her duties as Mercy were becoming too much of a strain.

Perhaps somewhat hypocritically, Angela _had_ been genuinely furious at Moira's retaliation. An idle doodle on Moira's fingers didn't make an obvious mockery of an international paramilitary organization whose relationship with the public was already dangerously close to unraveling. What if the press had managed to snap a picture of the back of Angela's neck? What if her own faith in her life's work and the competence of her colleagues was called into question? It had been grossly inappropriate -- but then, that was Moira, wasn't it? Never cognizant of having taken things too far, a decade Angela's senior but still needing basic fucking _common sense and decency_ spelled out for her like she was a child, and even then she never listened ...

" _Das ist genug,_ " Angela scolded herself, the noise inside the aircraft more than loud enough to drown out the whispered rebuke. This was exactly the memory lane she didn't want to trip down.

With a frustrated sigh, she gave up on even pretending to read, and focused on emptying her mind as much as she was ever able to. She gazed at the window -- not out of it, but at the plexiglass itself. The rain was bucketing down now, and the rivulets of water that forked and converged atop it in the wind like veins, like the lightning in the distance, a perfect representation of the way the world echoed back on itself, and the almost wanton salience of universal connectivity that triggered within every scientist a ... how had Moira once put it? Ah, yes: a compulsion to strip Mother Nature of her skin and taste the meat and marrow of her truths.

Then Angela remembered the way Moira's tongue had dipped between her thighs not a breath after the analogy had been spoken, and she only just prevented herself from smacking a palm against her head in vexation. She sensed Moira frown at her flinch, and cut her eyes at the other woman as Moira opened her mouth, no doubt to taunt her for it as Moira herself had been taunted, but their mutual vow of silence was maintained -- ironically, by a deafening _crack,_  and then Murphy's curse, and the sudden dimming of the instrument panel in the cockpit.

"What's going on?" Moira barked. "What's happened?"

"Uh, nothing to worry about," the pilot assured her, albeit in a tone of voice that belied his words. "Just a, ah, a spot of lightning ... _shit_ ..."

"A  _spot_ of lightning?!"

Angela's right hand hurt. She looked down and found that Moira was clutching it with her left in a death grip -- a fact that Moira herself didn't seem to notice. The older woman's eyes were wide and darting, and her chest rose and fell in quick, shallow breaths.

Angela's reflexive compassion overrode her discomfort at the physical contact.

"Doctor O'Deorain," she said. " _Moira._ Look at me."

Moira did, brow furrowed, blinking fast.

" _Lyons,_ " Angela said gravely, " _is better than Barry's._ "

Moira gasped.

It was Angela's second suckerpunch of the day, although her misgivings about having dealt this one were far fewer. It was just that the best way to defuse panic, she had learned, was to both distract the patient and get them to laugh. Moira wouldn't laugh, Angela well knew, but her affronted sneer was a close second: she wore anger much more comfortably than she did fear, and the quickest, most sure-fire way to incense her was to hit her right in the tea.

" _Bite your vulgar Swiss tongue,_ you impudent little--"

"There's an island," Angela could halfway hear Murphy interject over Moira's continuing rant.

"--tastes like it was bagged in the scrotal pouch of a leper and steeped in a peat bog--"

"I'm gonna try to set us down--"

"--think I haven't _seen_ you put the milk in first, and you have the unmitigated gall to call _my_ methodologies barbaric--"

"--Mayday, Mayday, this is flight number six-two-four--"

"--absolutely _zero evidence,_ I'll have you know--"

"--fifty kilometers off the coast of--"

"-- _and another thing_ \--"

Angela's ears popped painfully as they descended, and she squeezed Moira's hand that had yet to let go of her own. She kept her gaze on the approaching green, trying to gauge the lay of the land -- its size and major geographical features, and most importantly, any signs of human habitation.

She couldn't tell much, but there was, at least, a flashing beacon of some kind at the summit of what looked to be a small mountain.

The plane lurched erratically as it approached the beach, buffeted by wind, one particularly monstrous wave grasping at its floats, threatening to tug it out of the air entirely.

Moira was quiet. Murphy's right shoulder rolled with the movement of his arm, and Angela knew, with a sick feeling of foreboding, that he was crossing himself.

"Brace yourselves, ladies," he warned them.

Angela's eyes met Moira's, saw Moira's mouth form her name.

The little plane hit the beach, skipping over the sand like a stone across water, and the last thought to flit through Angela's mind before her head hit the side wall and her world went black was the random and ridiculous silent admission that, in fact, she was to this day a loyal Barry's drinker, even if she did still put the milk in first.


End file.
